Best of
Social

1979

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre


Keith Johnstone - 1979
    Admired for its clarity and zest, Impro lays bare the techniques and exercises used to foster spontaneity and narrative skill for actors. These techniques and exercises were evolved in the actors' studio, when he was Associate Director of the Royal Court and then in demonstrations to schools and colleges and ultimately in the founding of a company of performers called The Theatre Machine.Divided into four sections, 'Status', 'Spontaneity', 'Narrative Skills' and 'Masks and Trance', arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the book sets out the specific approaches which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.

People Skills: How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts


Robert Bolton - 1979
    Maybe you listen to an argument in which neither party seems to hear the other. Or maybe your mind drifts to other matters when people talk to you. People Skills is a communication skills handbook that can help you eliminate these and other communication problems. Author Robert Bolton describes the twelve most common communication barriers, showing how these “roadblocks” damage relationships by increasing defensiveness, aggressiveness, or dependency. He explains how to acquire the ability to listen, assert yourself, resolve conflicts, and work out problems with others. These are skills that will help you communicate calmly, even in stressful emotionally charged situations. People Skills will show you: · How to get your needs met using simple assertion techniques · How body language often speaks louder than words · How to use silence as a valuable communication tool · How to de-escalate family disputes, lovers' quarrels, and other heated arguments Both thought-provoking and practical, People Skills is filled with workable ideas that you can use to improve your communication in meaningful ways, every day.

Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas


Isaiah Berlin - 1979
    With his unusual powers of imaginative re-creation, Berlin brings to life original minds that swam against the current of their times.

Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War


Ronald Fraser - 1979
    The contours of the war take shape through the words of the eyewitnesses. The atmosphere of events is vividly recaptured. And though the lived experience of the participants is revealed the uniquely tragic essence of all civil war. 'Fascinating and brilliantly unorthodox. ' Hugh Thomas, author of THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO.

Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America


E. Richard Brown - 1979
    Rockefeller, and the development of a revolutionary curriculum by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Brown documents the story of how a powerful professional elite gained virtual hegemony in the Western theatre of healing by effectively taking control of the ethos and practice of Western medicine.E. Richard Brown describes how, in 1905, the American Medical Association’s new Council on Medical Education funded by Carnegie and Rockefeller commenced serious activity. They employed the services of Abraham Flexner who proceeded to visit and “assess” every single medical school in the US and Canada.Within a short time of this development, medical schools all around the US began to collapse or consolidate. By 1910, 30 schools had merged, and 21 had closed their doors. Of the 166 medical schools operating in 1904, 133 had survived by 1910, and 104 by 1915. Fifteen years later, only 76 schools of medicine existed in the US. And they all followed the same curriculum.Brown shows how both social and political processes were consciously manipulated by a medical elite acting in concert with immense corporate wealth to create a system of medicine that better served economic and hegemonic intentions than social or humanitarian needs.

How to Stand Up for Yourself


Paul A. Hauck - 1979
    This book advises how to get rid of such feelings and feel good about standing up for yourself, without taking advantage of other people.

International Conflict for Beginners


Roger Fisher - 1979